Palestinians have fled Gaza City’s eastern Shejaiya district amid intense Israeli bombardment and a reported incursion by ground forces.
According to a resident of Gaza City, it sounded “as if the war was starting again”, while Hamas authorities said at least seven people had been killed in airstrikes.
Palestinian armed groups said they targeted a tank and a bulldozer east of Shejaiya, where heavy fighting took place during an Israeli operation late last year.
The Israeli military has not commented on the reports, but has ordered residents to evacuate and move south.
It comes days after Israel’s prime minister said “the intense phase” of the fight against Hamas was “about to end.”
The Israeli military launched a campaign to destroy Hamas in response to an unprecedented attack on southern Israel on October 7, which killed around 1,200 people and took 251 others hostage.
More than 37,760 people have been killed in Gaza since then, according to the Hamas-run Health Ministry.
Shejaiya residents and Hamas-affiliated Palestinian media reported a series of Israeli airstrikes, artillery shelling and helicopter fire on Thursday morning.
They later said that Israeli ground forces had entered the eastern parts of the district, not far from the Gaza-Israel border fence.
A video posted by activist Hema al-Khalili on social media showed people taking cover after what he said was an airstrike on a multi-storey building.
Other images appeared to show hundreds of civilians fleeing the area on foot, many of them carrying their belongings, and several injured children being treated at a field hospital.
One person told AFP news agency that the situation in Shejaiya was “very difficult and frightening”.
“Residents are running in panic through the streets… a number of wounded and martyrs are lying on the streets,” they added.
The Hamas-led Civil Protection Force in Gaza reported attacks on several homes and said its rescue teams had recovered three bodies from the home of one family.
It was later reported that the death toll in Shejaiya had risen to seven and more victims were feared under the rubble of destroyed buildings.
The Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) has not made a statement about Shejaiya.
However, in recent months the organization has carried out similar operations in northern Gaza, in response to information that Hamas fighters have regrouped there.
The IDF’s Arab spokesman posted a message on social media ordering residents to leave Shejaiya after the first attacks were reported.
“For your safety, you must immediately evacuate south through Salah al-Din Street, to the humanitarian zone,” said Lt. Col. Avichay Adraee, referring to the north-south road used by hundreds of thousands in the first weeks of the war. Palestinians was used. who fled Gaza City when it was the initial focus of Israel’s offensive against Hamas.
An attached map showed an arrow pointing south, but it was not clear whether residents of Shejaiya were ordered to head towards the “al-Mawasi humanitarian area” that runs along the coast in southern and central Gaza . That would mean crossing the east-west Israeli military zone south of Gaza City, effectively cutting the territory in two.
The al-Mawasi humanitarian area was expanded seven weeks ago, when Israeli ground forces began what they called “precision” operations in the southernmost city of Rafah, which they say is Hamas’s last stronghold.
According to the UN, more than a million displaced people have since fled Rafah, while the nearby Rafah border crossing with Egypt has been closed since Israeli forces took control of the Palestinian side.
The UN says the border crossing closure has contributed to a significant reduction in the amount of aid reaching South Gaza.
It has also prevented medical evacuations of seriously injured and ill Palestinians who require specialist treatment abroad.
On Thursday, 21 children with cancer were reportedly allowed to leave Gaza for the first time through the Kerem Shalom goods border with Israel, an Egyptian medical source told AFP.
There was no immediate confirmation from Israeli authorities, nor was it clear where they would be treated.
